24 MAY 1930, Page 13

Seagulls

I WILL shape me a bird that will be the envy of all creatures

said the Lord.

I will give them wings whose property it shall be to use wind and storm as things for weaving patterns in the air, figured swift and white as for a second they are traced there, then lost for evermore.

I will scatter them freely on the seas and round the earthly shore.

Far, far from the earth, in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, shall I place their playground and their hearth.

Sailing silver rays they'll make while on furrowed fields by England's coast they follow in the ploughman's wake.

When in rocks their home installing they'll wheel in crowds like snowflakes falling.

Though in the tempest ships go down they shall sustain their--play as if the storm was but a lover's frown.

And their cries, so glad and yet so wan, shall strike in pleasure and in pain across the 'memory of Man, - -bringing back the scene of early morning by the' sea and.things that might have been.

G. S. Comm..